


a path we chose; no going back

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Bruce is a good dad, Dick Grayson is Robin, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, or he tries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 17:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14061411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: Dick gets sent to the principal's office. Bruce tries to talk to him about it, with little success.A conversation in four parts.





	a path we chose; no going back

**Author's Note:**

> So this turned out sadder than I planned, lol

Dick and Bruce are standing on the front steps of Gotham Academy, staring at each other; Dick in his Gotham Academy uniform and Bruce in his business suit. Dick had been called into the principal’s office for injuring another student and Bruce is here to pick him up. A part of him wonders if he should have let Alfred take care of it. Alfred is very much better with people and Bruce is… Bruce is very, very bad with people. He doesn’t know what to do with a child acting out, while Alfred probably has too much experience with it.

But it was Bruce who had taken Dick in, not Alfred, making Dick his responsibility.

“You punched him.” Bruce couldn’t quite keep the confusion out of his voice. Dick refuses to meet his gaze.

“I didn’t  _ punch  _ him,” Dick says, which is not really the answer any of them want to hear.

A moment. The shuffling of feet. Bruce just stares at Dick. Dick stares at the ground, biting his lip. His hands behind his back, foot tapping absently against the floor. Bruce resists the urge to sigh and run a hand through his face.

“Then why did he have a bloody nose?”

“I didn’t punch him,” Dick says again.

Bruce waits. Over the past year, he’s found that Dick is either incredibly easy or impossible to wait out. Until now, he’s found no discernible pattern to what kind of conditions led to what kind of outcome, but he’s determined to figure it out.

Dick continues to stare at the ground. Bruce wonders if he’ll actually manage to hold out this time, or if Alfred will have to come pick them up again. 

But then again, the tension is very clear in Dick’s shoulders and he’s refusing to meet Bruce’s eyes, which hasn’t happened since his first few months in the manor. He seems uninjured, but his uniform is torn, and his face is pale. Bruce can’t quite see his expression, but he thinks that it’s a strange cross between angry and terrified. Bruce has no idea what could have brought it on.

He sighs and places a hand on Dick’s shoulder. He ignores the way Dick flinches, very slightly.

“Wanna get some ice cream, chum,” Bruce says. Dick’s head snaps up, mouth parted, face pale. Bruce notices for the first time that his eyes are red-rimmed. “Oreos?”

“Sure,” Dick says tentatively.

 

\--

 

They found the ice cream place on patrol, on Robin’s first night out. Bruce never quite managed to figure out how a nine-year-old managed to tie up three muggers, help an old lady cross a street, bring a lost dog home, punch a thief in the face,  _ and  _ drag Bruce to the only ice cream parlor open in the city at three a.m. in full costume. Logically, he knows how it happened since he was there for most of it, but he doesn’t know  _ how  _ it happened. 

The thought makes him sound a lot like Clark, so Bruce doesn’t dwell on it much. He’s reminded of it again, though, now that it’s Bruce who drags Dick towards the same ice cream parlor. When he had been driving towards Gotham Academy, Bruce had been very determined to be a strict parent and lecture Dick about getting into fights and now…

Now they’re getting ice cream. More than that, Bruce is pretty sure this one is his fault. He wonders if Dick has some sort of metagene that dissolves all of Bruce’s methodological walls he’s built to keep people out.

Bruce gets a cone of Oreo ice cream and vanilla for himself. He goes over to the corner seat, where Dick had pressed his face against the window, eyes distant. He doesn’t react when Bruce sits down across from him, not even when when Bruce passes his cone towards him.

“Better eat fast, chum,” he says, going for as cheerful as he can manage. “Or your ice cream’s going to melt.”

Dick takes the cone in his hand and takes a small bite out of it. Bruce frowns.

"Dick…” he says. Dick flinches much more openly this time.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Dick stares at the table. His hands are clenched tight on the ice cream cone. He shakes his head.

“It’s stupid,” he says.

“I doubt that very much,” Bruce says.

“It is, though.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened and we can figure out what to do after?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Dick…” Bruce says, a note of warning in his voice.

“It’s just really, really stupid! though it’s just--I shouldn’t have--” Dick clenches his hand too tight and the ice cream cone snaps, spilling ice cream all over the table. Dick lets out a string of curses which honestly concerns Bruce, because children shouldn’t be cursing so much, should they? And in so many languages?

“Language,” Bruce says, because it seems like the only thing he can say. Dick’s head snaps towards him, eyes wide.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t mean I mean it was an accident I shouldn’t have I’ll just--I’ll just leave now.” And he actually turns on his heel, hands still dripping with ice cream, to walk out of the parlor.

“Do you plan to walk back to the manor?” Bruce asks, genuinely bemused. The manor is on the other side of Gotham. Bruce feels confused and wrong-footed. It’s not a feeling he often has. Dick seems to be the biggest source of it.

Dick freezes, his back to Bruce. His shoulders are tense.

“Bruce,” he says.

“Yes?”

“I’m having a really, really bad day.”

“Do you want to talk about it, chum?”

“I really, really don’t. Can we just go home and forget this day ever happened?”

Bruce sighs. He grabs some paper napkins and heads over to Dick. He wipes some of the ice cream off his hand.

“We can,” he says. “But I can’t make it better if I don’t know what’s wrong. And it’s a problem that’s going to keep cropping up if we don’t fix it.”

“Nothing can make it better,” Dick says. “And I can fix it on my own. I’ve got a handle on it.”

Bruce needs a new strategy, he thinks. This one is very, very far from working. Dick’s not responding to ice cream and talking, which is strange, but not quite unheard of. Whatever happened at Gotham Academy must have really shaken him.

He’s refusing help and wanting to do things on his own, which is quite common. But it also means that Dick is nine and on the verge of doing something very, very stupid again.

He only really responds to one thing, when he gets like this.

“Car. Now.” He lets himself sound like Batman, just a little. He’s not Batman here and Dick isn’t Robin. This isn’t life and death and Dick doesn’t need him giving orders. He needs a father, but Bruce only knows how to be Batman.

Miraculously, Dick’s shoulder loosen and he lets out a breath, unsteady and almost on the verge of a sob.

“C’mon boss,” he says and heads for the car.

 

\--

 

Bruce doesn’t talk in the car, just drives. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Dick staring out the window.

“It was my fault,” Dick finally says, when they’re about halfway to the manor. “I got too angry.”

Bruce remains quiet, partly because Dick doesn’t sound like he wants to be interrupted, and partly because there’s nothing much to say.

“I’ve always been like this, even at the circus. This isn’t something new. Not because… I always get too angry.” His voice cracks and Bruce pretends not to notice. Leather creaks as Dick’s hands close around them. “I get into fights. It’s easier there. When I don’t have to stay.”

“Why do you get angry?” Bruce asks.

“I don’t know.”

Bruce waits. Dick knows there’s more to be said about that, knows that an ‘I don’t know’ is never enough for Bruce. He’s unnaturally still in his car seat, just the sound of creaking leather and shaky breathing reminding Bruce that he’s real and there.

“I feel helpless. Like there’s nothing I can do about anything. Then I get angry.”

Bruce remembers a boy who was a lot like that. He often wonders where that anger came from, if he would’ve been different if things had been better. He’s not sure and that’s a bit terrifying.

“That’s not a bad thing,” he tells Dick. “You just need to learn to channel your anger into better things.”

Not the best advice, he knows. Bruce remembers a thousand adults telling him the same thing at Dick’s age. He doesn’t think any of them would approve of Bruce’s life choices.

Dick must know this too because he lets out a laugh, high-pitched and hollow. “Mom and Dad used to get so mad at me. They said I needed to control my temper. That I shouldn’t hurt people. I never learned--I never listened and now--”

The sound that escapes Dick sounds too much like a sob, and he’s breathing too hard and too fast.

They reach the manor and Bruce has never driven faster or braked harder in his entire life. He turns to Dick fully. There are tear tracks in his cheeks but he’s not crying now, even if he definitely was a few moments earlier. He’s never cried in front of Bruce, apart from that first night. 

“What did the other boy say, Dick?” Bruce asks. Dick shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I shouldn’t have done done anything.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Bruce agrees. “But some reasons are better than others. You know that.”

Dick looks away again. He looks nine-years-old, sad and lonely and broken, in a world he doesn’t know and a life he never wanted, which he doesn’t often do. Dick is very good at seeming timeless, child and adult at the same time, unbeatable and untouchable. Bruce wonders if he was ever like that.

“I don’t think my mom and dad would like what I’m doing now,” he says, a quiet whisper. "I think they'll be really, really angry with what I'm doing."

Bruce doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t really have anything to say to that.

 

\--

 

That night, he finds Robin in the cave, a grin that seems too wide and a little too manic.

“Dick…” Bruce thinks, not for the first time, that maybe he shouldn’t be dragging a child into his crusade.

Dick narrows his eyes and raises a gloved hand. Bruce thinks that he shouldn’t let Robin out on patrol, not when there was so clearly a problem. It could mess with Dick’s head, with his focus, things that are deadly in the streets.

“I’m Robin now,” Dick says, practically bouncing in his spot. He seems nothing like the boy with tear stained cheeks from earlier.

Bruce suddenly feels like a failure as a guardian. He wants Dick to be better than him, not follow the same path at a younger age.

“Are you sure you want to go out on patrol?” Batman asks, and Bruce means,  _ Are you okay? _

Dick seems to understand, because his expression softens. His grin is still a little too manic, the grin he gets when he’s feeling too sad and not wanting to let anyone know, but it gets a little less intense, a little gentler; he's always been gentle with Bruce and kind to Alfred and charming to everyone else. Dick is a performer, first and foremost.

“Robin always wants to help people,” he says.

And who helps Robin, Bruce wants to ask, but he already knows the answer. He puts a hand on Dick’s shoulder and Dick relaxes under it, his breathing going easier, like all his secrets and pain have melted away. Like he’s entered a world where they don’t matter because there are things that matter more.

Bruce feels that maybe he’s done something wrong there. That it’s not enough, that maybe he’s too indulgent and this life isn’t meant for children, that this is no way to deal with grief.

But there is no way to deal with grief, not when it burrows under every crevice of your skin and stays. The best they can do is deal with what they have.

“C’mon then, partner,” he says. “We’ve got work to do.”

Dick smiles at him wide and blinding, and for the first time today: real.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://discowlng.tumblr.com) if you ever want to talk :D  
> Btw, your comments give me life :DD


End file.
